The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

The emotion of love gives all of us a misleading illusion of knowing the other.

Necessary illusions enable us to live.

realize I’m making it sound like we’re all crazy, but that’s because we kind of are. Most people are living in an illusion based on someone else’s beliefs.

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

What is so frightening is the extent to which we may idealize others when we have such trouble tolerating ourselves

Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking — and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.

everyone is living in their own self-created illusion,

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?